(These are excerpts—click on the title to view the whole piece!)
 

Earthquake

While studying in my room, I had the door to the balcony opened. It was an unusually warm early March evening with a huge, full, ruby-red moon like a grapefruit. I was fascinated by this moon and could not keep my eyes on the notes or my thoughts on the simple Aristotelian logic, when all of a sudden a roaring noise came from the street, and the building started to shake violently.
 

The News from America

I had no idea what was happening. I didn't even care. Whatever it was, it had brought my parents together as nothing in the past had. I was so happy to see mother and father together, talking, agreeing. Hanging onto both their hands at the same time was a new experience, something I had craved for all my childhood.
 

The Catcher in the Rye

Somewhere in his notebooks on Marx, Lenin, exiled in Paris, considering a possible revolution, writes, "Everything is politics." That was the frame of mind with which we grew up. We were taught to interpret and discover the political aspects of everyday life, and so we did.
 

Christmas Past

I remember going to sleep at night, praying to the god I didn't believe in, to please, if he did exist, and this would be a way to show he did, make me have blue eyes and not be a Jew.